


polaroid picture

by Creatortan



Category: South Park
Genre: Absolute cheesefest, Alternate Universe - High School, Brief Violence, Fluff, Grand Gesture Confession, Kyman Secret Santa, Kyman Secret Santa 2019, M/M, Protective Kyle, Sleepovers, brief depictions of injury, brief mentions of kyle/other people, but the fic is really cute ok its nothing but fluff, implied mutual pining, like a hallmark movie, playful roughhousing, poorly written fight scene (i don't know how to write fight scenes), stan is a good friend, the title is Not Good im sorry, this fic is cheesy as hell but in a cute and sweet way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21888046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Creatortan/pseuds/Creatortan
Summary: There's an art gallery, a nice camera, and a boy Kyle has just realized he's desperately fallen for.(My gift for theKyman Secret Santa)
Relationships: Kyle Broflovski/Eric Cartman
Comments: 7
Kudos: 146





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [pipercase](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipercase/gifts).



> My gift for the [Kyman Secret Santa](https://kymansecretsanta.tumblr.com) for Carly [(ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipercase/profile) \+ [tumblr)](https://cartmanfindslove.tumblr.com/)

Kyle’s girlfriend broke up with him. Jenny only lasted two weeks with him, which was longer than Kyle’s girlfriend before her—Annie—who dumped him in the middle of the first date. 

Currently, Kyle was shooting free throws in his driveway, while Stan, dutifully, listened to him complain from his seat on the sidewalk.

“And then Jenny thinks she can tell  _ me  _ that I didn’t talk to her enough—when our first date was to the movies! You can’t talk to someone at the movies!” 

“Dude, you always talk during movies,” Stan said. 

“Exactly! She kept shushing me!” Kyle threw the basketball again, barely clipping the edge of the hoop. Stan caught the ball and tossed it back. “Honestly, I don’t regret breaking it off. Jenny was nice, but she was kind of boring—she never made an effort to get to know me, you know?”

Stan made a sound between his teeth. Kyle ignored it. 

Eventually, Stan sighed, and spoke up again.

“Look, Kyle...don’t you think, you...uh…” Stan said carefully, “Your relationships all seem to end in the same way?”

The basketball thunked against the concrete, coming up to land in Kyle’s palms.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, just this year, you had Bebe who dumped you at Homecoming, Mandy who dumped you for Kevin Stoley,” Stan listed on his fingers, “Annie who dumped you at Dave and Buster’s, and now Jenny.”

“So all my girlfriends dumped me; I don’t see how that’s my fault.” 

“Yeah, but it’s  _ why  _ they dumped you that’s the problem, dude.” Stan raised an eyebrow, pointing a finger at Kyle like he said something clever. “They all dumped you because you kept spending more time with Cartman than with them.”

The ball rocketed from Kyle’s hands straight into the garage door. 

_ “Dude!”  _ Kyle reared on his heels to turn to Stan, shocked. A dozen and one counter-arguments flared to life in his head. “What does that—that has  _ nothing  _ to do with this!”

“You ditched Bebe at Homecoming because you saw Cartman there, you followed Cartman to Oklahoma for a  _ week  _ while you were with Mandy, you only went to Dave and Buster’s for your date with Annie because Cartman was  _ also  _ there on a date—” Stan interrupted himself, “Which, he totally goaded you into, dude; he didn’t even like Jake—” Stan shook his head. “And now you have Jenny, who dumped you because you kept complaining about Cartman whenever she’d set up a date.”

“I—Th—” Kyle stammered, “Those are all coincidences! You seriously can’t expect me to just let Cartman do what he wants.”

“When was the last time he did something that was  _ actually  _ dangerous, dude?” Stan said. At this point, he’d stopped fidgeting with his phone to look directly at Kyle. “He was at Homecoming because Butters talked him into going, he was in Oklahoma to visit a penpal, and the only thing he’s been doing these past two weeks is obsessively take artsy pictures with his fancy camera.” Stan stood up. “Besides, you wouldn’t still be hanging out with him if you really hated him.” 

Kyle spluttered again. Stan walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Honestly, dude? We think there’s something else going on. We think you  _ like  _ Cartman. Like. Have a crush on him.”

At this, Kyle burst into laughter—just a hair too manic to think he was really laughing. 

_ “Jesus,  _ Stan—fuck no! Ugh—me? And  _ him?”  _

“I mean, you should think about it, since you say you hate him so much but you’re still going over to his house tomorrow to play video games.” 

Before Kyle could respond, his phone rang in his pocket—with the specific text-tone he’d set for Cartman. Stan grinned at him, smug. Kyle rolled his eyes as he took out his phone, but before he could open the text he stopped.

“Wait, what do you mean  _ ‘we?’”  _

“Oh, mostly Kenny.” Stan held up his own phone to show the conversation he’d been having with Kenny for the past twenty minutes.

_ “Mostly!?” _

-

The next day, Kyle was exactly where Stan said he’d be: settled deep in his spot on Cartman’s couch. He’d lost track of how many games they’d run through—picking one, arguing over it, playing for a bit before they got bored and picked another. Kyle wanted to go back to something they already knew they liked, but Cartman was adamant about playing something new. 

“How are you not bored as shit with the old games?” Cartman said. He was sprawled out on the couch, his chin tucked against his chest. 

“I like games I’m good at.” Kyle shrugged. “Dude—you keep fucking  _ missing  _ shit. There’s loot  _ right  _ there. Wait! Watch out!—and you’re dead. Nice job.”

Cartman groaned and threw his head back, hitting his controller on the arm of the couch. 

“God, Kyle,  _ shut up.”  _ He halfheartedly slapped at Kyle’s arm with the back of his hand. “You’re so  _ annoying.  _ Stop backseat driving me with my own fucking game.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you’d play the game right.” Kyle nudged at Cartman with his elbow, the barest hints of a grin in his voice. 

“It’s not my fault I can’t fucking see anything,” Cartman grumbled, his face all scrunched up. Kyle thought he looked like an angry cat. 

“What does that mean? You blind or something?”

“It  _ means  _ I haven’t gotten new contacts in yet,  _ Kahl.”  _ Cartman’s voice dipped into a mumble, so quiet Kyle almost didn’t hear him when he said, “And I hate wearing my fucking glasses.”

“You have glasses?” Kyle paused the game, turning in his seat to better face Cartman. “Dude, just go get them. You’re gonna fuck up your eyes even more if you keep squinting at the screen.”

Cartman looked over at Kyle, glaring weakly. 

“Ugh— _ fine.”  _ He dramatically rolled off of the couch, grumbling the whole way up the stairs to his room, and trudging back down less than a minute later. 

Cartman looked almost sheepish to be wearing his glasses—the frames a thick, boxy black—and he sat back down without looking at Kyle, pouting. 

“They look good,” Kyle said offhandedly.

“Nuh-uh! I look like a fucking dweeb!” Cartman swiveled towards Kyle to shove at him. Kyle started laughing, trying to block himself from Cartman’s soft, playful blows. Soon, Cartman’s overbaked complaints petered out into laughter as well. Soon, it was just the two of them, laughing and roughhousing on the couch, shoving each other back and forth. And all of a sudden, Kyle looked over at Eric, and something hit his brain like a bullet; every detail instantly crystallized in his memory with vivid clarity—big doe eyes looking up at him through the glasses, glittering gold in the cheap overhead light, crinkled at the edges with mirth, warm hands on his arm with perfect, rounded fingernails, a weight leaning against him, the smell of chips and vanilla body lotion, and a wide, wide smile with perfect white teeth and grinning pink lips and like a truck hitting him Kyle wanted to kiss him.

Oh. 

_ Oh.  _

Despite the colossal pressure of the internal realization he’d just had, Kyle was able to swallow down his beating heart and turn back to the game, casual. As the two of them sat back, Kyle was just...sort of left with the feeling in his chest—too big and confusing for the small couch. He almost felt tempted to run, to make some excuse so he could go home and hide under his blankets, to compartmentalize or rationalize his way out. 

But then Eric tucked his legs up onto the couch, and one of his cat-patterned socks bumped against Kyle’s thigh. Kyle sat back against the couch and opened his mouth. 

“So, uh, why have you been taking so many pictures lately?” Kyle started, genuinely curious. The fancy, hand-me-down camera sat on the TV stand next to the Xbox. “You’ve been going all around town for them, right?”

“Yeah,” the grin was still evident in Eric’s voice, “I’m in that fucking art gallery thing the school is doing—you know the charity thing? It’s to raise money for the art department, ‘cause you know  _ nobody  _ in the fucking  _ art department  _ has anything left. Like, for the last play, we almost had to fucking  _ advertise  _ for Tweak’s Coffee.  _ Advertise.  _ Can you fucking imagine. We were doing  _ Dracula  _ and we almost had to put a fucking  _ coffee stand  _ on stage! It’s fucking wild. Not to mention whatever the band is doing lately…”

Kyle took a deep breath, letting the warm, too-big-too-confusing feeling fill his chest. With Eric’s voice in the background, the feeling was...comforting. They continued to play video games, and bicker lightly over them, and Eric tucked his feet under Kyle’s leg, and Kyle was okay.

-

It took Kyle a day and a half before he told Stan. He felt obligated to, almost, considering it was Stan who put the idea in his head. Thankfully, though, Stan took the information in stride, and didn’t, at least to Kyle’s face, gloat about being right.

In fact, it was Stan—or, more likely, a combination of Stan and Kenny-over-text—who calmed Kyle down enough to actually think about his feelings, even talk about them.

“Though, if you start to talk about, like… _ ”  _ Stan’s voice dropped to a whisper,  _ “...that stuff,  _ I’m probably just gonna hand you over to Kenny. There’s only so much I can handle hearing you talk about, dude. I really don’t want to hear, like,  _ sexual fantasies  _ about Cartman.”

Kyle appreciated the sentiment, though he did retaliate with a headlock and a noogie. 

And he did take the advice, sort of. Mostly, Kyle was trying to sort shit out in his own head. (The first time he said the words “ _ I have a crush on Eric Cartman” _ out loud, he ended up smashing his face into a pillow and flailing around like a little kid.) 

Did he have a plan? Did he know what to do? Not fucking really. Did that really matter? Well. Not yet. Maybe after the holidays. Maybe Kyle would make it a New Years resolution to do something about it, or something.

The art gallery event was Saturday, it was currently Thursday. Kyle was probably going to go—not just because Cartman was going to be there, but also because Stan was apparently participating too. Kyle was proud of him, ‘cause Stan was kind of shy about his music.

(That didn’t stop Stan from insisting Kyle was only going for Cartman, though, no matter how much Kyle argued otherwise. After a few minutes, Kyle realized Stan was only teasing.)

Kyle was currently trying to look up the dress code for the thing, since he had no fucking clue how to dress for artsy shit. Was it a business casual thing? Or could he just show up in jeans…? 

He was hunched over his laptop when his phone rang—he’d changed Cartman’s ringtone to “Born this Way” a while ago—and hid his smile behind his hand, even though he was alone in his room.

“What’s up—”

“Kahl! Come get me!” Cartman’s voice sounded panicked, and Kyle was immediately alert. “I’m next to—” Cartman yelped. There was some sort of muffled noise in the background, voices. Cartman dropped to a whisper. “I’m next to the post office and I pissed off some assholes and they’re drunk and I can’t get to my truck without them seeing me.” 

Kyle was out of the door and behind the wheel of his own car before Cartman had even finished talking. He’d crammed the phone to his ear with his shoulder to keep Cartman on the line, and probably broke a few laws as he sped over—it didn’t matter. It was like eleven at night and all the cops were asleep. No one gave a shit in South Park. 

Kyle shoved his phone into his jacket pocket as he pulled up. He saw Cartman’s truck, and he saw about four guys circling it like vultures. They stumbled around like zombies, each of them holding a beer can, save for the one with a bottle of whiskey precariously hanging out of his back pocket. One of them had stopped to take a piss against the back tire of Cartman’s truck. They were maybe late-twenties, the kind of scum that got kicked out of the strip club for rowdy behavior. 

Kyle surveyed the area. He saw Cartman hiding in an alley, barely lit by his dim phone screen. 

Kyle’s headlights made the drunks cringe, and they started coming towards his car. 

“Go home, already!” Kyle rolled down his window to yell at them, hoping that maybe, in their alcoholic haze, they’d just listen.

Of course not. 

Instead they slurred obscenities to him and started coming closer. That was fine. Kyle was in a fucking car. He was going to wait them out or maybe even tap one with his bumper to get them to leave.

But then one of them looked over, and saw Eric.

And as the drunk pointed, and said something, and all four of them started stumbling over to the alley—all hell broke loose. 

Kyle slammed his car door behind him and marched directly up to the biggest of the four dudes, and unthinkingly, decked him in the fucking face. 

“Get the  _ fuck  _ out of here,” Kyle glared at each of the drunks. The one with the whiskey bottle turned tail and ran, tripping over his own feet in his haste to get out. 

Unlike that guy, the other three just got angry, but Kyle didn’t drive out here thinking he’d lose to some fucking drunken bastards. He was Kyle fucking Broflovski and he played to win. 

Years of bullshit and adrenaline fueled Kyle through what could loosely be referred to as a fight. The drunks were hardly coherent enough to have a chance—they were all muscle and no finesse, and Kyle had a good bit of both. 

And, of course, Kyle played dirty. 

He tried to keep his punches to the torso, maybe a few to the face, but Kyle did, maybe just a little, relish in the crunch of a broken nose, and the wheeze of pain as he kneed the biggest guy in the dick.

One of the guys ran after a few hits, another tried to crawl away before curling up to cradle his broken nose—and the last one had gone out cold after the aforementioned knee to the dick.

It was over in minutes. Kyle didn’t have a scratch on him, 

The same couldn’t be said of Eric. When Kyle trotted over to him, he saw the sticky trail of blood down his chin, and his cheek looked red and swollen. Before Kyle could say anything, Eric blurted: 

“Jesus, dude; overkill much?” (Though with the look in his eye, Kyle would bet Eric’s breathlessness was more in awe than anything.) “Holy  _ shit  _ are those brass knuckles?” 

“Are you okay?” Kyle tugged Eric into the light of the streetlamp, to get a better look. (After slipping the brass knuckles off of his right hand. They were a gift from his aunt. On his mother’s side.)

“My lip hurts like a bitch, but other than that I’m fine.” He licked some blood off of his teeth, grimacing. He looked like he was going to spit it out, but then decided against it. “Thanks for, uh, this.” 

Eric looked around, glancing at the bodies left unconscious on the ground, at the splatters of blood left on the sidewalk. He started to mutter something about his therapist under his breath before his eyes caught on something. 

“Is _—_ oh  _ fuck, oh fuck—shit  _ no—” Eric darted over to a dark pile on the sidewalk. He fell to his knees. “Shit, shit,  _ shit.”  _

Kyle went over, and when he looked down, he saw Eric desperately trying to pick up the pieces of his camera. Kyle looked from the broken pieces to Eric’s hands and saw blood and that’s when he started kneeling by Eric and pulling his hands away from the pile. 

“Hey, hey, c’mon,” Kyle said. Eric’s eyes had started to go a little far away, his breath heaving. “Eric, c’mon. Let’s go home.” 

That got his attention. With a sniffle, Eric stood up, wiping his hands on his jeans, smearing the blood that had pooled from the shallow cuts on his fingers. Kyle escorted them back to his car. The ride back home was quiet. 

Kyle sat Eric down at the dining table. Though he was trying to keep calm, he was pretty sure he almost sprinted to the bathroom for the first aid kit. Patching Eric up was easy, methodical. His cuts were pretty superficial, thankfully. He gave Eric an icepack for his lip. 

After putting the first aid kit away, Kyle came back downstairs with a wrapped box. 

“Hey,” Kyle put the box down on the table in front of Eric. “This was your Christmas gift, but, uh, I guess it’s better to give it to you now.”

“Why would  _ you  _ get  _ me  _ a Christmas gift? You’ve never given me a gift—you don’t even celebrate Christmas.” Eric didn’t sound angry or annoyed—just...just kind of confused. 

“There was a Black Friday sale, and, uh, Christmas is closer than your birthday.” 

There was a glint in Eric’s eyes, excited. He slipped his bandaged finger under the paper and eagerly tore it off. 

_ “Holy shit.”  _ Eric’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. “Holy  _ shit,  _ Kyle,  _ holy shit.”  _

In Eric’s hands was a shiny box containing a shiny new camera. 

“How did you—this...holy  _ fuck,”  _ Eric babbled, ripping open the box, looking at the camera, sitting innocently in its plastic. “Kyle, this is...oh my god.”

“Yeah, uh...I remembered you saying something about this brand, and then I saw it on sale and, you know.” Kyle shrugged. 

“But it’s so  _ expensive.  _ It can’t have been on sale  _ that much.”  _

“Yeah, well, it was.” It wasn’t, actually. The camera still cost a fucking mint. And he’d bought it back when he was still calling Eric his “nemesis.” Kyle really was an idiot, huh.

“I...dude.” And then Eric looked up at him with those big gold eyes and, cheesy as it was, Kyle knew it was worth it. “Thanks, Kahl. I’m—I’m seriously, just....fuck. Thank you.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Kyle gave into the urge to ruffle Eric’s hair. “Gimme your keys, and I’ll go get your truck. You go lay down or something.”

“Uh, I mean, okay.” Eric handed over his keys. “Where do you want me to lay down? I’m pretty sure your mom won’t be happy seeing me on the couch in the morning.” 

“Oh, my parents are in Toronto for the weekend, and Ike is at a friend’s house.” Kyle walked towards the door, his back to Eric. “You can head up to my room if you want. We can watch a movie on my laptop if you don’t want to go to bed yet.”

Kyle didn’t look back, knowing his ears were burning the second the words were out of his mouth. He shut the door behind him, quickly, as to not hear Eric’s response. 

Kyle took his bike to the post office—since, really, it wasn’t that far away anyways. He threw his bike in the bed of Eric’s truck.

When he stepped back inside his house, the couch was empty. Kyle took his shoes and jacket off at the door, if not only to stall for some time, to get his thoughts together. Which didn’t really work, since most of his thoughts were pretty stupid anyways. 

And even then, Kyle took the stairs two at a time.

His bedroom door was open, and Eric was sitting on his bed, cross-legged under the blankets. Kyle’s laptop was sitting on a stack of pillows in front of him.

“Hey.” Eric glanced up, almost sheepish. Kyle tried valiantly not to notice how Eric’s jeans were crumpled on the floor.

“I’m gonna, uh, brush my teeth.” Kyle grabbed some random pajamas from his drawer and raced to the bathroom to change. He did brush his teeth too, though. 

Kyle, also very valiantly, didn’t look under the blankets when he raised them to get into the bed. Instead, he sat an appropriate, platonic distance from Eric and settled back against the headboard. 

“What did you pick?”

“Since I’ve had a night, I want something brain-rotting to watch, so—do you want a shitty Christmas comedy, or a shitty Christmas romcom.”

“Jesus, what’s with you and Christmas?” Kyle’s lip twitched in a smile. “Pick whatever. You’re probably going to fall asleep in the middle anyways.”

“Hey!” Eric elbowed Kyle, lightly. “For that, we’re watching a romcom.”

Kyle groaned, overdramatic.

True to form, the movie was awful, and the two of them absolutely ripped on it.

Though, of course, somehow Eric became invested in the story. Especially as he became more tired, and his eyes began to droop, he started quietly shushing Kyle during the corny, shmoopy romantic scenes. Kyle didn’t see the appeal, but Eric looked happy.

At one point, Eric glanced over, and his eyes caught Kyle’s as Kyle was watching him. Eric smiled, softly. He almost looked like he was going to say something—but thought against it, and went back to the movie, shuffling a little to readjust his pillow, inadvertently moving his leg so it touched Kyle’s. Neither of them moved. 

Eventually, Eric did fall asleep first. If anyone asked, Kyle was feeling sappy because of the movie, and because it was late—which is the only reason why he gave into the urge to brush the hair away from Eric’s forehead.

-

It was the day of the art gallery.

Even though Kyle wasn’t dressed any worse or any better than anyone else, he still felt out of place. He sort of wandered around, briefly saying hi to the people he recognized. 

He didn’t tell Cartman he was coming, for some reason. The gallery just didn’t really come up, and Kyle couldn’t find a way to tell Cartman he was coming that didn’t feel forced. 

Kyle didn’t know anything about art to have any  _ real  _ opinions, but he pretended like he knew what he was doing. Sort of. Really, he was slowly going from place to place, trying to inch his way towards the photography section without seeming too eager for it. 

Some of the stuff was nice, though. Tweek had some nice paintings of scenery, Red had sewed some elaborate looking costume dress—Stan’s piece was an original duet with Kenny. Kyle reluctantly put on the headphones that were with the video screen, but he had to admit the song sounded really good. Stan and Kenny sounded nice together.

Eventually, Kyle found a hallway, with a plaque outside that titled the exhibit inside “Home.”

In the hall, there were pictures. On the wall, evenly spaced, there were large pictures of scenes from around South Park. Main Street, City Hall, Stark’s Pond. They were pretty, but kind of boring. Then, as Kyle walked further down the hall, the pictures were spaced closer together—and their content changed, only a bit. Now, there were pictures of their fourth grade classroom, and the edge of Stark’s pond where it was still frozen and covered in ice-skate tracks, the fort they made in the woods when they were kids.

Even still, the pictures grew even closer together. Now there were homes. Porches and backyards—Kyle knew every one—and as the pictures began to stagger, there were closeups. A paint splatter on Stan’s back porch, a family picture frame, Kenny’s old parka, a hastily glued plate from the china cabinet in Butters’s house, a cat collar, a scar or two or three. 

And then. 

Kyle saw his front door. And the paint chipping off of his bike. And his old hat. And the posters on his bedroom wall. And his own hands, a basketball between them. And the freckles on the back of his neck. And his laugh, with the gap between his teeth. And as Kyle walked further and further down the hall, the photos layered on top of each other, their edges stacked, more and more photos of Kyle. Kyle. Kyle. 

He made it to the end of the hall, and there was Eric, standing in the center of the room, in the middle of a collage of Kyle. 

As Kyle himself stood in the doorway, he could see how the images all came together to form the silhouette of a house.

Because the whole exhibit, all of the pictures, represented “Home”—Eric’s home, his heart. 

Kyle wasn’t stupid. There...there was nothing else this could mean. And Eric was standing there, hopeful, looking up at Kyle with his  _ eyes.  _ Through his glasses, no less. Because Kyle said they looked good on him.

Kyle walked towards Eric, looking around the room still. And Kyle's face split into a smile, disbelieving—and he laughed. 

He turned to face Eric, not even an arm’s length away from him. If Kyle wanted, he could reach out and touch him. And Kyle wanted. And he did.

Kyle took Eric’s hand.

“God, we’re fucking idiots, aren’t we?” Kyle said, his voice soft with fondness. 

Eric glanced down at their joined hands, once, before looking back at Kyle. His hopeful expression melted into one of pure joy. And for a few moments, they just stared at one another—and just like before, Kyle was struck by how much he wanted to kiss him.

So he did. 

Kyle put a hand on Eric’s cheek, and when their lips met it was only a little too rough at first, a little too eager. And then Eric was gripping at Kyle’s shoulder and trying to pull him closer, and Kyle kept grinning into the kiss, and it felt like everything Kyle had been wanting for years now, everything he couldn’t find anywhere else but right here—right with Eric Cartman.

And then a voice—that sounded suspiciously like Kenny—shouted “Finally!”

Without breaking the kiss, Kyle flipped the bird to their audience. He heard a click and a mechanical shutter, and finally, he and Eric pulled apart. When they looked over, there was Kenny, and Stan, and Butters, Bebe, Tweek, Craig, Wendy, Clyde, and whoever else was trying to fill into the hallway to see. Kenny had blocked them from getting into the room, but Kenny was also brandishing a Polaroid camera in one hand, and shaking a picture from it in the other. 

“I think this one gets a place of honor on the picture wall, don’t you think?” Kenny held up the photo—Kyle and Eric’s first kiss, with the added bonus of Kyle’s middle finger. It was perfect. 

-

Flash forward to some time later. Kyle filled up the tank of his car at a gas station in Portland. Eric stuck his head out of the window.

“Come  _ on,  _ Kahl! Maggie is gonna starve if we don’t get home!”

“The cat is not going to starve, Eric. Ms. Rhoda has never let us down before when she’s house-sat, right?” 

“Yes, but our poor Margaret Contessa must be so  _ worried.  _ She hasn’t seen her daddies in  _ forever.”  _

“It’s been two weeks, babe.” Kyle got back into the car. “I think she can handle another hour.”

Eric stuck his tongue out, before darting over to steal a kiss, settling back into his seat with his phone. 

Kyle flipped open his wallet to put his card back in, and for a brief moment, he saw that old Polaroid. He smiled at it, and when he reached over to hold Eric’s hand, he brushed his thumb against the gold band on Eric’s ring finger.

**Author's Note:**

> Some details that didn't make it into the fic, in no particular order:  
> -they're in high school, but it's not exact when--maybe junior or senior year  
> -eric's penpal was romper stomper, who also gave him the first camera  
> -good, professional grade cameras are like. so fucking expensive. like, three thousand dollars expensive for the ones that are really Up There. though however much kyle actually spent is up to you, however much it was....was a lot (how did he get the money? probably saving it up, honestly. I picture kyle as the type to not really be a big spender usually and to just. get money from family or awards. maybe he has or had a job)  
> -both of them had been pining for each other for years now, kyle was the only one who didnt realize it, and eric's big exhibit was his confession bc he knew he and kyle were getting along better  
> -the reason the exhibit didn't come off as weird was cause it's south park and everyone knows eric and kyle and were prob expecting smth like this anyways  
> -kyle probably also went to therapy/counseling at some point, honestly, which is why he was so chill about his crush  
> -my kyle is autistic--the reason he wants to go back to old games all the time is bc he's hyperfixated on them  
> -when they're watching the movie, eric was going to confess to kyle right then, but decided against it bc of his plan with the art gallery


End file.
